Profligate leftist prostitution partying from who knows where. || "It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality." -- JG Ballard. || "You try running with your sagging breasts down the middle of the fucking street. People will throw a blanket over you. And grab you. And call the police. For fuck's sake." -- Germaine Greer.

Monday, July 31, 2006

The vacuum is here to stay.

While the children of Qana suffocated in the one place they thought they'd be safe, Tony Blair was in the Californian resort of Pebble Beach, delivering a speech to a bunch of Murdoch employees and various other worthless nobodies.

In case you're wondering, it wasn't up to much. In fact, it was typical Blair, filled with the same meaningless nonsense which has now been blathered about for nine years.

Absolute and utter rubbish. The left-right divide is still there for everyone to see; it's only the politicians themselves who want to remove the spectrum from view, and that's because they want to hide the fact that nearly all of them say exactly the same thing and have policies which are almost indistinguishable from one another. This all began with Blair making the break from New Labour, the idea that without rejecting the past that Labour would never return to office. This was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now. In the aftermath of Black Wednesday, Labour was always going to win the 1997 election. If John Smith had lived, he would almost certainly of become prime minister.

The ideological break came with the establishment of what was called the "third way". Neither left nor right, but something entirely new. In the event, what this third way meant in practice and still means is essentially Thatcherism with a kinder face. The ultimate example of this was the way Labour didn't dare to touch the Tory spending plans for a couple of years, lest they be accused of returning to the tax and spend policies which they had supposedly promised to leave behind. The third way meant sucking up to what had previously been seen as the nest of vipers which was the Daily Mail and the Sun, and with Major being made a laughing stock, it worked for a while. The Sun came out for Labour a few weeks before the 97 election, when previously on the day of the election in 92 it informed its readers that if they were the last to leave if Kinnock won, would they please turn out the light? Kinnock himself blamed the Mail and Sun for losing in 92. There was therefore no chance that Blair would dare to anger the Rothermeres' and Murdoch.

It has to be said that there have been some successes regarding the "third way". Nominally left wing policies such as the huge rise in spending on the NHS and schools have now become such sacred cows that the Tories cannot dare to question them, to the horror of their own right wing. Alongside this though the "third way" has meant the acceleration of the private finance initiative in providing new hospitals and schools; contracts which will result in millions for companies over decades, but which aren't on the chancellors budget books for now. The reintroduction of the market in health care, the use of private consultants for various operations are all examples of how Blair has thrown off the ideological shackles with no regard for what is the best value for both money and care. In education, academies which require sponsors who can then dictate an amount of the curriculum are resulting in schools where creationists are taking control, as well as where minor indiscipline is now also leading to suspension and expulsion. Trust schools, which no one wanted except the Tories and Blair, will be exploited to their full potential if Cameron manages to get back in.

But I digress. Back to Blair:

He defended boldness in his political leadership, saying: "In these times caution is error; to hesitate is to lose", adding that his worry has been that he has not been radical enough in his leadership.

Yes, a non-sequitur, one of Blair's favourite methods of talking complete bollocks but which looks like it means something on the surface. What Blair really means here is that he's dedicated to pleasing the headlines of the newspapers. While the left and the Guardian often urge caution and suggest to take things slower and to come to policy agreements over time, as well as having trials first, such as over the introduction of 24-hour drinking licenses and liberalisation of gambling, what Blair does is respond. If the Sun is screaming about asylum seekers, he cracks down. If the Mail suggests that yobs need tackling, along come ASBOs and the idea of summary justice. If the Sun demands that we have a referendum on the EU constitution, then bam, we get one, even if he'd suggested just days earlier that there was no need whatsoever for one. In essence, Blair has always known where his bread is buttered, and it's buttered with the rich and the powerful. He has to be especially careful now he has a reduced majority in parliament, hence why we've seen the complete capitulation of home office policy to the Sun, and the obscene and deadly way we've adopted US foreign policy without any debate.

Mr Blair, who flew by helicopter from San Francisco to the exclusive Pebble Beach resort to make his speech, argued that modern political debate in Europe and the US was "no longer between socialists and capitalists but instead between the globalisers and the advocates of protectionism, isolationism and nativism", which he described as issues of migration and national identity.

Blair is right on one thing here. Socialism as it was is dead. There's no turning back on that score. However, the purpose of the left now is to attempt to make capitalism kinder: to redistribute, to dull the worst excesses of mass consumerism, and to make sure that business is regulated not too heavily, but not too lightly either. Blair though conflates what he sees as protectionism and isolationism with what is actually self-preservation and being more critical of our allies. The example of the Peugeot workers is one of so-called protectionism: it's well known that they're being sacked here because our rules on employment are less stringent than they are on the continent, even though the factory to be closed is more productive than those in France.

Blair is such an ardent believer in the "special relationship" that he'll support America over absolutely anything: he involved us in a war in Iraq which we had no need to join in, a war we could have instead helped stop. The result is a country heading towards civil war where over 100,000 may well have died. His complete sycophancy towards the Bush administration position on Israel has lead directly to the deaths we saw yesterday in Qana. The refusal to demand an immediate ceasefire means that more have died than was necessary, and more will continue to die until they demand it. That isn't about isolating ourselves from the world at large, or rejecting the special relationship. The very best friends you can have are critical ones.

The prime minister argued: "Most confusingly for modern politicians, many of the policy prescriptions cross traditional left-right lines. Basic values, attitudes to the positive role of government, social objectives - these still divide among familiar party lines, but on policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay.

Again, more nonsense. Evidence that the left-right lines still exist are evidenced by the hatred that some quarters of the media have shown towards the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act should be a shining example of what a Labour government has brought in which has made life better for everyone in the country, and of the left's basic values. Instead it gets the blame for what are seen as "unpopular" decisions, such as that regarding the Afghan hijackers fleeing the Taliban and over control orders. The Sun demands that it be repealed, or the "worst" parts of it either struck out or amended. David Cameron suggested a UK bill of rights, only to be universally laughed at, especially because he hadn't consulted Kenneth Clarke, the man in charge of constitutional and democratic policy, who then described Cameron's idea as almost "xenophobic".

Attitudes to the positive role of government is not a good example of left-right attitudes being abandoned; mainly because the Blairites has thrown themselves in with the Tories in regarding the state as evil. Listen to Cameron go on about charitable organisations and entrepreneurs, without explaining how they'll make up for what the state provides in programmes such as Sure Start. The fact of the matter is that Blair has similarly repudiated the state - hence the ever rising involvement of the private sector in the NHS. The left still believes in the state and is right to - but Blair doesn't.

"In these conditions political leaders have to back their instinct and lead. The media climate will often be harsh. NGOs and pressure groups with single causes can be benevolent, but also can exercise a kind of malign tyranny over public debate.

"For a leader, don't let your ego be carried away by the praise or your spirit diminished by the criticism and look on each with a very searching eye. But for heaven's sake lead."

Yes, it gets worse. NGOs and pressure groups apparently can exercise a malign tyranny over public debate, but the media climate can often only be "harsh". The most obvious example of a malign tyranny on public debate is of course, the Sun - (proprietor: R Murdoch) a newspaper that tells it readers what they want and has an overbearing influence on the government. Hence the Sun believed every word of the "intelligence" on Iraq - mainly because Mr Murdoch thought it would lead to a barrel of oil being $20, not out of his feelings for the oppressed, murdered and tortured citizens of the country. When Dr David Kelly tragically took his own life, the Sun knew who was to blame, and it sure wasn't the government. The BBC came in for a battering day after day after day. When it came to terrorist suspects being held in custody for up to 90 days without charge, the Sun used an image of a man injured in the 7/7 bombings who was opposed to Blair's demands, with no apology given. When MPs voted against the plans, those who dared to exercise the right to represent both the public and their own minds were called traitors for their trouble.

All this support comes at a price though - hence the hysteria over the criminal justice system being "unbalanced", years of attacks on those fleeing persecution who came just wanting sanctuary, resulting in crackdown after crackdown on "bogus" asylum seekers and immigrants in general, and the demands for the Human Rights Act to be axed. Blair doesn't name what NGOs or single-issue lobbies he finds most distasteful, but we can be they're the same ones which cause him the most trouble: the likes of Liberty, the Stop the War coalition and various human rights groupings that don't turn a blind eye to abuses which the government does.

For Blair to pretend that he doesn't let his ego get carried away with praise is perverse. Here is a man that prefers the company of Silvio Berlusconi, Rupert Murdoch and others than to his cabinet or natural Labour supporters. His obsession with the rich has led to his biggest disaster on the home front: the loans for peerages scandal. He's more than capable of ignoring criticism, he's done that for years. Praise however will get you places.

Here though comes the most hypocritical line of them all:

My concern is that we cannot win this struggle by military means or security measures alone, or even principally by them.

"We have to put up our ideas against theirs. But our cause will only triumph if people see it is based on even-handedness, on fairness, on a deep and genuine passion to help others."

You only have to see the post previous to this one to realise what this means for everyone apart from Blair in practice. He's quite right that military and security means will never triumph on their own, yet still he wants to throw away hard-won liberties in the fight against terror. He either can't or won't criticise the destruction that Israel has heaped on Lebanon, out of all proportion to what started the conflict. Most of all, his government has been complicit in torture, as evidenced by Craig Murray in Uzbekistan, and by the rendition flights that ministers still refuse to admit they had any knowledge about. To Blair, even-handedness and the passion to help others only extends once the bombing has ended.

Blair then sums up his duration as prime minister in one speech. There's no doubting that at the low-level, Labour has improved Britain. The NHS, despite the problems it's now suffering has greatly improved. Education results are getting better, although whether this is down to pupils and students only being taught for the exam and nothing else is an argument that we should be having. Redistribution through tax credits, although badly flawed, is going on. Sure Start centres are helping the under-privileged with families immensely.

Yet there's so much more Blair could have achieved with his majorities. Instead, in his pursuit of headlines, of his lust for American power and continuing reliance on doing things almost entirely designed to rile both Labour backbenchers and his nominal support, he's failed. He'll be remembered, not for his political courage, but for his vacuousness. He led his party to victory, but without any love between him or them. The road ahead looks bleak, but not for Tony. He'll be with his friends making speeches across America, writing his memoirs and most likely sniping at the party which he has broken. Lucky for him, David Cameron seems ready to continue his legacy, although whether the kinder face of Thatcherism will remain we have yet to find out.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

She loves it.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Oh, what a lovely war!

31 Lebanese are laid to rest in a mass grave in Tyre; an environmental disaster is now also taking hold across Lebanon, as an estimated 15,000 tons of oil from the bombed Jiyeh power station is washed ashore.

Despite being hyped up by Downing Street, yesterday's talks between George Bush and Tony Blair were yet another miserable failure. If Blair did tell Bush that a ceasefire was urgently needed, then neither of them showed it at yesterday's joint press conference. Instead, it was all too depressingly familiar.

Indeed. Iraq gets ever closer to civil war with each passing day, the democratically elected government of the Palestinian occupied territories is boycotted and as a result cannot pay the workers of the Palestinian authority, while Israel arrests numerous members of that government without a word of criticism from those who are determined to make sure that democracy takes root. Instead of urging Israel to act proportionally, or even, god forbid, call a ceasefire, the US and Britain continue to give carte blanche for even more civilian casualties and the almost wholesale destruction of Lebanon, driving ever more of the remaining population in southern Lebanon into the arms of Hizbullah. Rather than supporting the democratically elected government which gained power in the aftermath of the "cedar revolution", they'd rather see Israel destroy a militia and most of the country in the process, just in case they have to attack Iran at some point in the future.

The whole of the meeting of the two minds can be summed up more succinctly using Bush's words of two weeks ago:

That's about as far as the analysis of the current situation goes, and even that is full of doublespeak. They have no intention of talking to Syria, let alone getting them to stop Hizbullah from doing this "shit".

In the meantime, while we wait for what looks to be another false dawn of hope at the UN security council on Monday, Israeli spokesmen continue to lie through their teeth. They're now rejecting calls from the UN for a 3 day truce so that humanitarian aid can be delivered because "Israel has opened humanitarian corridors to and from Lebanon." That would be the same corridors that are repeatedly coming under attack from Israel shelling and bombing raids, as evidenced by Robert Fisk and Fergal Keane (Click on the "refugee convoy comes under fire" link in the box on the right).

Friday, July 28, 2006

Daily Star/Sky-watch: To shock or not to shock?

Today's Daily Star announces on its front page that it has snatched/been sold pictures of Kate Lawler (she was in Big Brother) in "crazed obscene romps in nightclub", while the photograph of said gorgeous pouting Lawler shows her putting a brown substance (Mark Oaten denies all involvement) into her mouth. Incredible news, you're probably thinking, but who gives a shit?

Well, it seems that Sky News does. On their daily front page review, it says the following of the Daily Star:

This public service message wouldn't have anything to do with Sky News sharing the same proprietor (R. Murdoch) as the Sun, would it? The Sun also fights for the same downmarket demographic as the Star, although the Scum does at least attempt to feature some news, whether plagued with its right wing bias or not.

Adding insult to injury.

You sometimes have to wonder whether the Met realises just how obnoxious its actions actually are, as their ignorance seems to know no bounds. Following on from the CPS decision to only prosecute the force on health and safety grounds over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, they've publicly announced that the two firearms officers involved his death are back on "full operational duties". Whether this means they'll rejoin their colleagues in CO19 and potentially be called as a rapid response armed unit, we're not told.

This shouldn't necessarily cause a problem or be potentially offensive to Jean Charles's family. Yet the decision comes before the Met has concluded whether they should face any disciplinary action and not even a week after the Grauniad revealed that the two officers had lied to the IPCC, in another leak from the otherwise currently indisposed report. It therefore comes across as a snub, not only to those who remembered de Menezes's life last Saturday, but also to the IPCC and CPS for daring to suggest that the Met has a case to answer.

"Sir" Ian Blair fully illustrated the contempt with which the Met is treating the various investigations on what happened and went wrong on the 22nd of July last year yesterday. He said:

Blair is right on one thing: the decision to prosecute on health and safety grounds is a horrible fudge which serves little purpose and helps absolutely no one. Even so, Blair's whine about the nature of risk-taking is pretty rich. From what we know so far, it was numerous errors on the behalf on nearly all those involved in the operation on the 22nd that led to an innocent man being shot. He wasn't properly identified; he was allowed to get on and off a bus without being stopped; the firearms squad only reached Stockwell tube after Jean Charles had entered the station; Cressida Dick, the woman in charge, was hopelessly vague in her orders: she claims she only wanted the officers to stop and arrest de Menezes; the officers took her "stop him" and possibly added "at all costs" to mean to shoot him dead; and even then he had been tackled and would have been unable to trigger any explosives when he was shot repeatedly in the head. Adding insult to injury, officer/s later tried to change the log to make it look as if they had concluded he wasn't one of the suspects, smeared de Menezes repeatedly and Blair himself tried to stop the investigation from starting straight away, possibly destroying evidence and hampering efforts to establish what went wrong from the very beginning. It wasn't de Menezes that put himself at risk; it was incompetent, panicked policing that did.

Thankfully, not everyone involved with the Met has been so dismissive and resistant to the possibility that things went horribly wrong. Richard Barnes, a member of the Metropolitian Police Authority was yesterday both outspoken and eloquent:

"Is there no one within [the Met] with the moral fibre and sense of personal obligation to recognise that Jean Charles's fate was sealed by systemic failure?" he asked. "The power to exercise ultimate force carries with it the responsibility to ensure all other possible alternatives are exhausted, even in such a fast-moving, fluid situation. Those obligations were not fulfilled at Stockwell, and Jean Charles paid the ultimate price for that failure."

He added: "I find it repugnant, and an affront to common decency, that the establishment can get it so wrong and then close ranks to protect its members from accepting and exercising the obligations of office. It is simply not enough to accept the glittering prizes, whilst ignoring the failures. Where is the man of personal stature and integrity amongst them?"

Mr Barnes, who is the Tory policing spokesman in London, said the shooting was followed by "various leaks that intended to besmirch his [Mr Menezes'] character. The source of this information is questionable, but it most probably came from those in authority. An innocent man was shot dead, and it was thought appropriate to traduce his character."

Could anyone have put it any better? At the moment, instead of reading the report that would tell us just how badly the operation went and how things could be improved in lieu of a similar situation, we're instead told with no apparent humility that the officers who shot dead an innocent man are returning to work, doubtless unlikely to face any further action against them. I don't doubt that they themselves have most likely suffered, having to deal with the fact that they shot a man dead who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the decision seems to be rubbing Jean Charles's relatives face in it. In a week in which it's been revealed that the investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence was affected by corruption as well institutional racism and incompetence, you'd think that they give a bit more thought into their public relations exercises. That seems as much of a pipe dream as ever.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Bombs over Gretna, caravans in Rome.

The aftermath of the Israeli bombing of the southern port city of Tyre; blood on the pavement in Haifa.

Margaret Beckett wasn't always New Labour to the core. In 1981 she supported Tony Benn in his fight for the Labour deputy leadership against Denis Healey. Even in 2002 she apparently had reservations about war with Iraq, but was promptly reassured, most likely by the dodgy intelligence which convinced so many other MPs.

Fast forward 4 years, and Beckett finds herself as foreign secretary after a disastrous period as head of Defra where this year she managed to comprehensively cock-up the EU subsidy payments to farmers in England, in many cases leaving them penniless. Her first 2 months as Jack Straw's successor have not been full of defining moments, except for her pathetic performance on the Today programme last week. Attending the Rome discussions yesterday, she performed what has become the UK's bone-headed and predictable attitude and role in foreign affairs: supporting the Americans come what may. According to Beckett, "even if you could get a ceasefire half an hour ago, you would probably be back in hostilities in a few days", which sums up exactly how optimistic and tough the UK and US have been in forcing Israel and Hizbullah to stop their deadly exchanges.

Israel has quite reasonably taken this fudge to mean that it's been given carte blanche to do whatever the hell it likes. Israeli justice minister (irony strikes again) Haim Ramon also said that Israel has now given those in south Lebanon not connected to Hizbullah more than enough time to get out - so anyone there now is a "terrorist". By Ramon's logic, the 4 UN peacekeepers who were killed in an apparent deliberate attack were actually Hizbullah militants who by staying in the area were asking for it. Even more logically, as Israel now seems to consider anyone there a terrorist, it's probably a good idea to take out independent monitors who might make accusations of war crimes. After all, armies have to make as much effort as possible not to kill civilians, whether there are fighters in the area or not. With the UN and Lebanese army being bombed, there's less chance of Israel's moral military having to fend off charges of crimes against humanity.

Ramon's belligerence also rams home the comments of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who made what even the heartless Condoleezza Rice called an "impassioned plea" at the Rome summit. He asked whether "an Israeli teardrop was worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood". It seems quite so. Those who are still fleeing the fighting have often had to go on foot - the roads being made impassible by Israeli bombing, bridges broken in two and vehicles blown apart by the very same laser-guided missiles that went through Prestwick airport. Those who have stayed behind, unable to take elderly loved ones with them, will now seemingly be dismissed as terrorists and killers for doing so.

The situation then is thus: Beckett is deeply concerned about the United States not informing the UK that it's moving weapons of mass destruction through our territory destined for use in Lebanon, yet she won't call for the immediate ceasefire which would mean that those weapons wouldn't be used to possibly kill innocent civilians. Such mendacity shows the UK's policy over Israel-Lebanon for what it is; complete murderous folly. The apparent lack of permission to use Prestwick should also re-open questions about whether the CIA bothered to ask permission to refuel jets linked to extraordinary rendition there. Figures compiled by the Guardian show that Prestwick was one of the airports most used by jets linked to rendition flights. On that respect, we're similarly told that if the US had wanted to render suspected terrorists through our airspace to countries where they could held illegally and tortured, they'd have asked permission. The missiles to Israel seem to give the lie to that argument.

Meanwhile, everyone's second favourite terrorist nutjob has been calling for Muslims worldwide to become "martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the Crusaders." Expect the left to use this as evidence that Israel's actions are provoking extremism, while the right will say that this proves that Israel's response against Hizbullah is part of the global war on terror. The first position holds more water than the second, but it's still giving more credit to the ranting lunatics of al-Qaida than their clash of civilisations creed deserves. What it really shows is the failure of the international community. We've been so weakened by the war in Iraq that all we can do is mutter apologies to the slaughtered Lebanese and Israeli citizens, while doing nothing to stop the bombing on both sides, as extremists call for yet more blood to be spilt. At the same time, we refuse to involve the two nations (Syria and Iran) that can help stop it. Our policy is not only spineless, it's also condemning the Middle East to yet more decades of turmoil.

Things are no better in northern Israel, still coming under fire from barrages of Hizbullah rockets. A 15-year-old girl was killed yesterday, while others were injured. That Hizbullah can still launch its missiles two weeks on either shows that they were thoroughly underestimated by the Israelis, or that the IDF has been attacking places where there are no Hizbullah militants, letting them continue to fire their deadly weaponry with impunity. Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader has today warned that missiles will soon be fired further than Haifa, increasing worries that Hizbullah still has Fajr-3 Iranian made missiles which it has not yet used.

Everyone agrees that this cannot go on, yet the diplomatic discussions in Rome are nothing more than a talking shop which the United States is in complete control of. The US refuses to even talk to Syria or Iran, saying they have to act first, which is ridiculous considering the influence they have over Hizbullah and in the region as a whole. The lasting permanent ceasefire the US say it wants cannot be delivered without their involvement. Israel is of course above even attending such discussions, tied up as it is in destroying an entire country little by little. As Jonathan Freedland points out, it has been the failed diplomacy and wars of the States that have led to this situation in the first place. The failure to be tough on Israel over Palestine means that the whole region is paying the price. Sadly, there's nothing to suggest that this is going to change. Instead, the bodies will continue to pile up, while everyone continues to wring their hands.

Things go from bad to worse for Mr Mahmood.

A day after three men walked free from court, cleared of attempting to buy the fictional chemical substance "red mercury" for terrorist purposes, Mazher Mahmood is facing yet another crisis. Florim Gashi, the man paid £10,000 for informing Mahmood of the "plot" to kidnap Victoria Beckham and her children has turned supergrass.

The court judges themselves are not optimistic that Gashi's evidence will be accepted by a jury; after all, he lied to the police. Nevertheless, it's another set-back for Mahmood, a man who only believes in press freedom when it earns him and his bosses money. The full unmasking of the fake sheikh and his gutter entrapment journalism are a step nearer.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Book review: Murder in Samarkand by Craig Murray.

Craig Murray's memoir of his time in Uzbekistan is one of those books that ought to be required reading for anyone who supports the "war on terror" as it is being fought at the moment. David Cameron's shadow cabinet, now increasingly likely to form the next government, could learn a lot too.

Opening with Murray's account of attending the trial of Uzbek "dissidents", you instantly discover just what sort of a country Uzbekistan is. While the United States and British government during Murray's time in Tashkent praised President Karimov's liberalisation, both of the economy and on human rights issues, the reality is laid bare page after page. Murray's description of the trial is remarkable for its similarities to K's nightmare first appearance before the court in Kafka's The Trial. The judge makes jokes which he and his officials laugh at heartily, while ignoring the defenses case that is being put to him. This itself is just a taster of what it is to come in the rest of Murray's tale: the behaviour of Simon Butt, Murray's Head of Department is a reflection of the justice system. He ignores and is angered by Murray's attempts to show the despotic nature of Karimov's regime, instead only listening to the positive spin that the Uzbeks and Americans put on things. Butt is in that respect, New Labour to the core.

Murray quickly established himself in Tashkent, both as a principled man who would listen to anyone who came to him with tales of human rights abuses, but also as a great friend to the British business community, the few of which were/are located there. On arrival, he visited each - something which the previous ambassador had not bothered to do in his entire time there. The so-called liberalisation of the economy was not only not happening, the country was in fact going backwards. The borders were closed; bazaars had been shut down; projects which were meant to being set up were either mothballed or not even getting off the ground; and on a visit to Ferghana university he finds there are no students; they were all out in the fields, forced into picking the cotton crop. The economy depends on the crop, with sixty percent of the population serving as a tied labour force. As such, the workers are slaves - paid too little to be able to leave. In Soviet times 70% of the crop was harvested by machine; now it is 90% picked by hand.

The fact that the country was better off in Soviet times is another recurring theme. Murray himself argues with an Uzbek girl about this, only for him to discover that he's badly in the wrong. The universal literacy which the Soviet system had provided was collapsing, while the welfare state institutions had already done so. Rather than pursuing communism, the country is now in the way Russia appears to be heading towards: ruthless nationalism, crackdowns on any dissent, no freedom of religion, banning of NGOs and all are being carried out under the banner of protecting the country from Islamic extremists, as part of the worldwide "war on terror".

Murray was expected by the Foreign Office to be just another yes man who questioned nothing and abided by the New Labour line of supporting America in whatever circumstances arose. If the Americans think Uzbekistan is OK, then so must Britain. It was Murray's disquiet and refusal to accept this that resulted in the now notorious charges being brought against him. Starting with his speech at Freedom House, only cleared at the last minute by the Foreign Office, his outspoken attacks on the human rights situation led to him slowly but inexorably being discommunicated, with his telegrams and emails back to Britain being ignored. Simon Butt described his telegrams as having an "emotional style", as if you can somehow report on men being raped with glass bottles with a stoical aloofness from the horror which is being perpetuated around you.

Throughout the book, Murray describes the true nature of the Uzbek security services and police, our former allies in the war on terror who provided us with "intelligence" which the government has no qualms about using or relying on. Male or female, nearly everyone who is arrested is raped. Torture is endemic - whether it involves the arrested being put in TB wards in order to catch the disease, the use of gas masks which are then blocked off to suffocate the victim without the normal telltale signs, or even and most notoriously, being boiled alive, all was carried out with no criticism from London or Washington.

Finally, Murray, about to go off on holiday but visiting London for the day is told that his staff have been suspended pending investigations. He himself was also under investigation over numerous allegations, involving issuing visas for girlfriends, turning up for work late and drunk, and various other trumped up misdemeanors, all off which apart from a couple he is eventually cleared of, neither of which should have been disciplinary issues in the first place. Eventually allowed to return to Tashkent, despite suffering a mental breakdown, his career is only ended after he wrote a telegram damning the intelligence which the West received from Uzbekistan through torture. After the leaking of the telegram to the Financial Times and interviews in the Guardian and on the Today programme, Murray was suspended and eventually given a severance package.

So far then, so grim and so political. Yet the book is enlivened throughout by Murray's nature. While for Max Hastings, reviewing the book in the Sunday Times, this trivalises the serious subject matter, Murray's almost laddishness actually tells you far more about the man than his passion for freedom and human rights does. While there's no doubting that his relationships with Uzbek girls and visits to nightclubs and "strip bars", if they can be called that, resulted in the breakdown of his marriage, Murray is the first to admit that he behaved badly. In the circumstances however, ignored by his superiors and accused of bringing the embassy into disrepute, he took solace in what he liked best, like anyone else would. His behaviour is wholly understandable, if not defendable. Most of all, it shows him as a normal human being, something which cannot be said about the New Labour people who tried to bring him down. His indiscretions also pale into insignificance when compared to the womanising and sleaze of John Prescott, David Blunkett and Boris Johnson.

While Murray's book arrives too late for those of us who sadly voted for Labour with a heavy heart last year, it's the kind of angry shout against the futility of Western policy that is so badly and desperately needed. The end result of the West's appeasement of Karimov was the Andijan massacre, which earned the Uzbeks the mild rebuke that was the excuse for Karimov to return into the welcoming arms of Vladimir Putin. Kicked out of the airbase they had used to bomb Afghanistan, the whole experience should of told the Bush administration just how counter-productive their current strategy is. On the contrary, it continues to regard Middle East dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt as best friends, while snubbing its nose at the democratically elected Hamas and Lebanese governments, letting Israel reduce Gaza and Lebanon to rubble. Most shocking off all, a so-called Labour government has stood by and supported the US to the hilt. As Murray writes, something about September the 11th changed the psyche of those who beforehand had been promoting an ethical foreign policy, allowing them to justify the use of torture, the lies surrounding the war in Iraq, and the attacks on civil liberties in this country.

Murray doesn't want to be referred to or thought of as a hero. John Pilger however manages to come up with a fitting description without using the h word, printed as it is on the front cover: a man of the highest principle. How true, and how typical of this Labour government, that it conspired to remove an ambassador who told them what they didn't want to hear. Tony Blair came to office promising to be purer than pure. Next time the government suggests that it has nothing to do with extraordinary rendition, or that it abhors torture, throw Murder in Samarkand at them.

(There's an excellent interview and further review on Lenin's Tomb. Obsolete also hosts the documents that Murray was ordered to remove from his website, here.)

"Dangerously deceitful, ruthless, exploitative and corrupt."

Oh dear. Poor Mazher Mahmood, the notoriously private "fake sheikh" who objects to having his photograph being published but is more than happy to ruin the lives of entirely innocent people to help the sales of the News of the Screws, is once again left looking like a liar and fantasist of the highest order.

The acquittal again raises questions about the police's relationship with the News of the Screws, as well as the seeming acquiescence of the Crown Prosecution Service in once again allowing itself to be humiliated for the purposes of enriching a certain R Murdoch. Their healthy relationship with the Screws is something that out to be examined by parliament - Rebekah Wade herself admitted that police officers had in the past been paid for information.

The whole trial was based around the mythical substance red mercury - most recently used as a plot device in an episode of the BBC series Spooks, where a chemistry professor at a university offered to sell some to a student from a terrorist organisation in order to entrap them in the process. Any self-respecting jihadi would know that red mercury is complete and utter bollocks - there's plenty of recipes out there on the internet for bomb-making without searching for a made-up chemical substance that could be used in a dirty bomb - a scenario that has been hyped out of all proportion (a BBC Horizon programme showed how ineffective such a bomb would be).

One of the defendants claimed in the case that he was interested in a liquid called red mercury that could be used wash discoloured money, which is a bit daft as any fule knows that you can clean dirty coins using either vinegar or coke. This is doubtless why it took the jury 30 hours of deliberations before they reached their not guilty verdict. Nevertheless, none of the evidence used against them, including Mahmood's own testimony suggested that they had been anything other than pawns in the News of the Screws' and Mahmood's game.

Unlike in the case of Mahmood versus Galloway, the defence lawyers were uncowed and vociferous in their condemnation of both Mahmood and the journalism of the Screws. Jeremy Dein QC said:

Earlier in the case, Stephen Solley QC had accused the Screws and Mahmood of engaging in "backdoor vigilantism" - forcing the police into investigating alleged crimes through their hyperbolic and sensational reporting. So damaging were the accusations leveled against the Screws and Mahmood that the judge at the end of the case tried desperately to infer that the case was not about the abhorrent, arrogant journalism which the Screws indulges in, but rather about the suspects non-existent plot. The failure of the prosecution however shows that is exactly what the Screws and Mahmood do: they build celebrities up, then they knock them down. In the case of the Victoria Beckham kidnap plot and today's not guilty verdicts, it shows how incredibly careful you have to be: the slightest fantasy about kidnapping a famous person or trying to gain a mythical substance can lead to you being in the dock.

Where does all this leave Mr Mahmood? As can be expected, he's still be robustly defended by his employers:

A spokeswoman for the News of the World said the paper was "disappointed" with the outcome of the trial but was "entirely satisfied" that the investigation was conducted with "wholly proper" methods and in close liaison with the police.

"Our story resulted from a thorough and legitimate investigation by Mazher Mahmood, one of the paper's most senior and experienced reporters, whose exposes have led to over 200 convictions," she said.

Doubtless, Mahmood will soon return to being the Screws' star reporter. He'll still probably expose more minor celebrities for being hypocrites, or entrap some into buying drugs which he himself bought for them. The only action then is to write to the NotW and tell them what you think about how they have persecuted innocent people for sales purposes, while still claiming to be representing the public at large in their endless campaign for "Sarah's law". your.letters@notw.co.uk is the address. Alternatively you can write to Mahmood himself, or even phone his desk. His phone number is 020 7782 4402 or you can email him at maz@notw.co.uk. He'll no doubt be happy to discuss his principled, caring and public-spirited journalism with you.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Blair, Israel, Lebanon and political bankruptcy.

A man cradles a Lebanese child injured in an Israeli airstrike on a car.

12 days after the crisis engulfing Lebanon and Israel began, the Dear Leader has finally decided that it's time to get tough on both sides. Spurred into action by both Kim Howell's howl on Saturday, and Condoleeza Rice's arrival in Beirut today, he called the destruction of a large part of Lebanon a "catastrophe", going on to say, "I don't want the killing to go on. I want the killing to stop. Now. It's got to stop on both sides and it's not going to stop on both sides without a plan to make it stop."

As is usual, Harry's Place, the supposed home of the internationalist, interventionist, "sensible" left, is ranting about "stoppers". They refer to the Stop the War march on Saturday in London as being pro-fascist, as many declared their solidarity with Hizbullah. Obsolete wasn't in attendance as it had to work, but otherwise would have been there, and it has to be admitted that declaring support for Hizbullah makes me very uncomfortable and uncertain indeed. While claims that Hizbullah is both fascist and terrorist are neither here nor there at the moment, why would any self-respecting left winger support an armed militia that is murdering innocent civilians, "resistance" or not? What Israel is doing amounts to state terrorism. What Hizbullah is doing amounts, as Juan Cole puts it, to war crimes. Supporting Hizbullah because they might make the Israelis think twice before they do such a thing again is not only harebrained, but smacks of the infantile gesture politics (not that there's anything wrong with them on occasion) of yesteryear which we have to leave behind to be taken seriously. That does not mean abandoning our values, our morals or our outrage. What it does mean is not supporting one bunch of killers over another. The principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend is a sign of political bankruptcy.

In the same way, we should be stepping up pressure on Tony Blair to actually put into action what he says. He needs to criticise Israel, forcefully and fully for the amount of innocent civilians they have killed purely as revenge. He rightfully recognises that what is at the epicentre of this whole debacle is the Israel-Palestine conflict. The two-state solution cannot come soon enough. Hence he needs to demand that Israel negotiate with Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas immediately. The disengagement plan Ehud Olmert was elected on is dead, destroyed by his own recklessness in the original attack on Gaza following the abduction of Corporal Shalit. It would never have worked anyway. Blair has made the right first steps in recognising that there needs to be a ceasefire. Next he has to realise that Britain has been left weakened internationally by its unprincipled and unquestioning lust for American power. Pulling back is still possible, even at this late stage.

Blair and the whole Foreign Office also have to understand that our silence over the last 12 days has helped Israel get away, literally, with murder. They have just as much blood on their hands as the IDF, Olmert, Peretz and Nasrallah. An early call could have saved lives. If Blair had an ounce of humanity left in him, he'd lose some sleep. Instead, he'll probably be as dead to the world tonight as those further down this page. The only difference being he'll wake up in the morning.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

de Menezes: CPS letter to family shows the firearms officers lied to the IPCC.

Another day, yet another revelation involving the 22nd of July last year. While most of today's Grauniad report tells us little we didn't already know, it for the first time exposes that the armed police who shot de Menezes lied to the investigators, something which they have in common with the officers who shot Harry Stanley.

In other words, they attempted to pervert the course of justice. This is something they could be charged with, or which at the very least should led to severe disciplinary action. It's also something that their comrades in CO19 would be unlikely to protest over, as even the likes of the Sun don't take kindly to lying police officers.

Hence a plea that is highly unlikely to lead to anything, but for once I'll be optimistic. To anyone who has access to the IPCC report: please leak it so that we can actually see in full what it says. Don't bother with the mainstream media; even the likes of the Guardian or Independent are unlikely to make the whole of it available. Send to it the likes of BlairWatch, Guido or Cryptome. Only then will the public be able to get to the bottom of all the bluster.

So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.

I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.

It's obvious that what Rowan Williams referred to as "despair and dismay" at Israel's war crimes and collective punishment is growing. Chris Mullin, a former very New Labour foreign office minister who lost his job, described Israel's actions as just that. Lebanon's prime minister, Fuad Saniora, continues to speak out, now saying: "This attack is no longer against Hizbullah; it is an attack against the Lebanese and Lebanon." He's right, but it's been that from the beginning. Ever since the first missiles struck Beirut's international airport, it was clear what Israel was intending to do, and indeed some Israeli military officials gave the game away: knocking Lebanon back twenty years. And for what? This isn't just about destroying Hizbullah; it's also about Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz showing they can be just as tough and just as criminal as Ariel Sharon. It's also worth remembering that it wasn't until Israel had starting bombing Lebanon that Hizbullah started firing its katyusha rockets in response.

This is not to apologise for or justify Hizbullah's actions. They started this, whether over the years Israel has been the aggressor or not. UN Resolution 1559 needs to be enforced, but then so do the resolutions that Israel has been in breach of for decades. The Middle East will never be at peace until the Palestinians have their state. The efforts by Olmert and Sharon to create an emasculated state not based on the 67 borders but on the security wall will fail, and the international community has to make sure that any state is viable. Similarly, the efforts by Israel ministers to link Hamas and Hizbullah into the "war on terror" have to be resisted. These groups can and must be negotitated with. Until everyone realises this, the cycle of death, hatred and crimes against humanity will continue, and for the moment it shows no signs of abating.

Tabloids shamed by the Daily Filth.

As Obsolete noted a couple of days ago, the tabloid coverage of the crisis in Lebanon has been astonishingly poor, even for newspapers whose natural concerns are their middle class readers' house prices.

What's even more pathetic is that both the Sun and Express have today ran stories relating to Lebanon on their front pages, but rather than focusing on the human catastrophe which has left over 300 Lebanese civilians dead and forced at least 500,000 to flee their homes, they're more concerned about the extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed. He left Britain of his own volition last year in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings and was then blocked from returning. Yesterday he was apparently begging to be let on one of the British ships transporting stranded citizens to Cyprus, so that he could visit his family back in Britain.The Express up till today had made no mention of the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict on its front page since the conflict was triggered last week, instead splashing variously on the weather, house prices and Princess Diana, all far more important topics for the average person who cares about real values and real value for money. The Sun meanwhile has been the tabloid which has gone with Lebanon the most, but with its own atypical spin and devotion to covering how our citizens were/are in peril. Last Saturday's paper described the conflict as a "terrorist war on Israelis",Monday's talked of a "Mercy dash to Brits", Tuesday's reported that 6 ships were in involved in a 'war' rescue (apparently changing their minds over the nature of the bombing within 3 days) while Wednesday's front page was mainly dedicated to the "BRITS FLEEING LEBANON".Today's coverage inside the Sun is just as bad. It refers to the tour given to journalists of the southern Beirut Shia suburbs, destroyed and reduced to rubble by Israeli bombing, as a "sympathy seeking stunt by terrorist leaders". Nowhere in the two pages given over to the crisis does it mention the civilian death toll.The Daily Mirror, the supposed left wing tabloid which proclaims to still carry its heart on its sleeve only bothered to mention Lebanon on its front page in a tenuous way when it reported on Bush and Blair's inadvertently recorded conversation at the G8 conference on Tuesday. It did however call for a ceasefire in its leader column on Wednesday. bat020 from Lenin's Tomb reports that today's Mirror contains coverage on the 18th and 19th pages - even further back in the paper than the Sun's articles.

Most disgraceful of all though has been the attitude of Associated Newspapers. Yesterday's London Evening Standard has to be a contender for worst front page of the year, if not the decade. Entirely based on the comments of Amos Oz, a man of Israeli left, who seems to think that the large child death toll may be because Hizbullah is using them as "human sandbags". No evidence to back it up, especially when it's considered that Israel has been bombing southern villages and roads, full of those trying to flee from the violence. Still, put the idea into the public's heads, and it's another way to look past the otherwise horrendous loss of life. After all, Israel is protecting itself from terrorists bent on the destruction of the Jewish state, right? Justification for more death is always needed.

Which brings us to possibly one of the most shameful episodes ever to hit the Street which wallows in it. The Daily Sport, the newspaper which habitually prints fake nude photographs of celebrities, has a pair of breasts on almost every page and which in the aftermath of September the 11th printed articles calling for little less than the turning of the Middle East into a sheet of glass, today features Lebanon on its front page. The centre pages contain various photographs of dead Lebanese civilians, some of which can be seen on this blog, and has an editorial which begs readers to write to the Israeli embassy calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire. The Sun, by contrast, attacked Jacques Chirac last Saturday for daring to do just that. One pornographer having more morals than another might not be much to get excited or hopeful about, but when even the gutter can see that something is going horribly wrong, a lot more of those who normally ignore or shrug off the news start to take notice, which can only be a good thing.

(If you happen to have a copy of the Daily Spurt for whichever reason and can scan/take photos of it so we can have the images for prosperity, Obsolete would be eternally grateful.)